When I was a youth pastor we invited a guest speaker along
to one of our services. When he turned up he said to me, “he had chosen a
particular message of his for the evening”. He told me that, “this sermon of
his had a real anointing on it.” Which really puzzled me… I just figured that
it was Pentecostal speak for, I’m an itinerant preacher and I’ve got a series
of ten or so messages I choose from and this one is one of my better ones. But I was concerned that he would use
terminology that inferred that the message he had was somehow more spirit
filled, more holy, more God inspired than other sermons and other peoples sermons
.
I’ve heard this word anointed
used more and more recently. I’ve heard people call a song anointed, saying
that somehow it is more special and more Holy Spirit endowed than other ones.
I’ve heard people speak about this person or that person being anointed for a
specific ministry, Christian conferences will talk of having this speaker along
who will impart a special anointing onto people. This church or that ministry
is anointed. It may be just a dialect of that weird church language,
Chistianese that I don’t speak. It may just be Semantics, but it puzzles and
worries me.
Along with that proclamation of something being anointed
comes a sense that its better than everything else, or more special than anyone
else, this is the reason it is successful. People will often use the anointing
as a way of stopping people being critical or even asking questions about a
person or an institution or a way of doing things, because it is speaking
against God’s anointed. That can easily become abusive controlling power
wrapped up in spiritual terms. It’s dangerous and can be damaging.
Why does this impact on you and I? why share this? Because I
think it’s important. You see one of the things that came along with the
reemphasis on the Holy Spirit in the Pentecostal and charismatic movements was
that if you were not experiencing all these different manifestations of God’s
Holy Spirit, it used to be based around speaking in tongues, then you didn’t
have God’s Spirit and you were seen as kind of a second-class citizen of the
kingdom of God. You may be familiar with Dr Zuess’ Sneeches who lived on
beaches! And the star bellied Sneechers thought they were the best kind of
Sneechers because they had stars upon thars. We can miss the fact that in God’s
anointed one, Jesus Christ, we have all been set aside, anointed by God’s Holy
Spirit to be God’s people to serve together to achieve the purposes of God.
We are working our way through the Old Testament, looking at
the work of the Holy Spirit in scriptures: from hovering over the water in the
creation narrative at the beginning of Genesis, to the fulfilment at Pentecost
of God pouring out the Spirit on all who believe. It gives us a chance to look
at what the Spirit did then and there, to ask what difference Jesus life death
and resurrection made, and what it means for us today.
This week we are looking at Saul, his anointing as King and
the connection with that of the work of the Holy Spirit, at the beginning of 1
Samuel chapter 10, and that disturbing verse in 1 Samuel 16 where it says that
the Holy Spirit departed from Saul after Samuel had anointed David and that an
evil spirit tormented him.
The book of Samuel follows on from the book of Judges.
Israel has got to the point where they are not happy with simply having God
appoint a judge for Israel when needed. They are beginning to have more of a sense of being a nation together,
and want a central government to defend them against their enemies. God gives
them what they want, he sends Samuel to find Saul… Physically Saul is what you
might expect a warrior king to look like, he stands head and shoulders above
the crowd. He had just been chasing his father’s donkeys across the hill
country, he is physically fit. So on
God’s command Samuel anoints him as King. He pours oil over his head, in Israel
before this priests had been anointed with oil to set them apart for their work
and now Saul is being set apart for the service of being King, being a leader.
It is a symbol of God’s choosing, this is the one whom God has chosen to rule
over us. It was also seen as God giving the person all the gifts that were
required for the role they were being asked to take on. Given the wisdom to
make right decisions, to,as we saw with Gideon last week, have the courage to
trust God and to act.
The passage we had read out basically deals with the three
signs that Samuel gives to Saul to encourage him that what Samuel has said and
done is from God. To prepare him for the role he will take up. To enable his to
develop the trust in God he will need to carry out that role. Three signs were,
(click) that Saul would meet some men
who would tell him his father’s donkeys had been found, and would convey back
to Saul’s father news that Saul was safe and well. Just a simple thing but it
could show Saul that Samuel was speaking from God. it also actually dealt with
the things that were on Saul’s agenda from his past role as a shepherd’s son.
Dealing with the past personal stuff so he was ready for what was to come.
The second was that he would meet some men going to worship who
would offer his two loaves of bread to eat. A simple sign that Samuel was
speaking the truth, a sign that God was able to provide for his everyday needs,
like Jesus says to his disciples that he can provide our daily needs so that we
should put first the Kingdom of God. It was also bread set aside for worship
and sacrifice. This bread was only for the priests to eat, it was a sign that
he was indeed anointed by God, just like the priests. David would also eat that
consecrated bread.
The last one was that at the oak of tabor Saul would meet a
group of prophets, dancing and singing and telling forth God’s word, and the
Spirit would fall on him and he would join them. A garrison of the philistines being there is
mentioned as well. The sign is that God would fill him with his Spirit to
enable him both to speak God’s word but also the courage to face the enemies of
Israel. All these things happen to Saul.
It tells us that the Spirit of the Lord did fall on Saul and
he prophesised, we don’t know what that actual did, just that people acknowldged it was because the Spirit of the Lord had come upon him. . We know the prophets were
singing and dancing and giving praise to God, maybe hesimply joined in. when we
praise and worship God we are proclaiming and declaring God’s goodness and
God’s story, God’s faithfulness and power to each other and to those who hear
us. It maybe that Saul started talking and speaking God’s word… taking what the
people knew of God’s activity and applying it to the present situation,
speaking truth to power, with the philistines not too far away to speak of YWHW
as Israel’s God was speaking truth to the military power of the time. But those
present recognised it as coming from God’s spirit. It was out of character
which is why one of the men asks if “Saul is now one of the prophets’.
It tells us that Saul changed, he was transformed. But such
a spiritual experience wasn’t a
guarantee that Saul was totally different than he had been. He may have at that
time been aware of God’s presence and God’s provision and empowering, but as
the story of Saul goes on we see that it does not translate into him being
willing to trust and wait on God, he seems very determined to go his own way. Being
filled with the Holy Spirit is not being possessed by the Holy Spirit, it does
not over ride our will or our personality, we always must choose to follow and
live for Jesus. The power of being King, draws him away from being humble and
trusting God. It leads to God choosing another in David and the presence of
God’s Spirit departing from Saul and God allowing his to be tormented by an
evil spirit. It is not the Spiritual experience that is the significant thing
it is that on going right relationship with God, humbly walking with the
Spirit, with the Lord that brings lasting change. While David made heaps of
mistakes the thing that sets him apart a a king is, that David was a man after
God’s own heart.
What does this all have to say to us.
Firstly we ned to do
In our new testament reading today, Paul is defending his
calling as an apostle to the Corinthians, who think Paul’s change of travel
plans, and postponing coming to see them is a sign that he is fickle and not
trustworthy, rather than it being a set of difficult circumstances. Paul does
not defend that by saying well I’m God’s anointed don’t criticise me. Rather he
points to the fact that he and his team are like everyone else, we belong to
Christ. He is the one who makes us stand firm, he has anointed us all, poured
out and filled all of us by his Holy Spirit.
That is his seal of ownership on us. A message would be sent from a king
to a group of people or an individual and it would be deemed authentic if it
had the kings seal on it. Made in wax with a ring or a stamp… The spirit’s
presence in all our lives is like a down payment a guarantee of what is to
come. A taste of eternity with Christ.
Applying that to our lives… anointing is first about all of
us in relationship with God. being anointed by the Holy Spirit means we are all
God’s chosen people, we have been chosen in and through the chosen one Jesus
Christ. God chooses to live with and in us by the Holy Spirit. It is no longer
just the chosen one or two, the ones that seem to be more successful or
prominent, but all of us, you and even me. We are God’s spirited people. In 1
Peter 2:9, Peter uses the image of both sets of people who were anointed and
set aside for God in the old testament to speak of the body of Christ, the
Church. He says ‘But You are a chosen people (anointed) a royal priesthood, a
holy nation (set aside) God’s special possession’. That you may declare forth
the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.”
The spirit of God is on all of us that together, like Saul did initially, we
may declare what God has done for us.
It applies to us because we are all anointed for service.
It’s not about being successful or having influence in the world, but the road
of humbly serving the Lord. God will often make the things that someone does
more fruitful in terms of numbers and being noticed, but we are all anointed
and gifted to together to witness to Jesus Christ. Paul talks of Christian
ministry to the Corinthians as one planting and one watering, but affirms that
it is God who brings the growth. It’s interesting we can see mass evangelism
having big results and we can forget that most people come to know Jesus
through a friend or family member loving them and sharing the good news of
Jesus Christ.
It applies to us because it is easy to equate being filled
with God Spirit or anointed in God’ spirit as a spiritual experience. I’ve had
heaps of Spiritual experiences and they are encouraging and life changing, they
awaken us again and again to the transforming power and presence of God, being
filled with God’s Spirit invites us to live in step with the Spirit, It I about
a daily walk with Jesus Christ, an ongoing, on growing relationship…We can be about wht God has called us to do because we know he both is able to deal with our past and hold our future in his hands, can put first the kingdom of God because we know God will supply our needs, that he has filled us with his Holy Spirit. That in
the end is what allows that anointing to permeate all areas of our life, that
in the end is the thing that strengthens us and enables us to live for Christ
and that is fruitful… as it produces in
us love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and
self-control… it results in Christ, the anointed one, being made manifest in
and through us.
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